New open data platform launches

Open data is everywhere. However, open data initiatives often manifest as mere CSV dumps on a forlorn web page. Junar, Lunfardo (Argentina slang) for “to know” or “to view,” seeks to help government and organizations take the guesswork out of developing their own software for such efforts.

Their open data platform allows organizations to collect and select their data, publish it, create reports and dashboards, and share their data online. The solution can be hosted or integrated into the organization’s website, and the data can be made open or for internal use only. End users can “follow” live data on the site, download it, or embed it. There’s also a built in API, so the organization doesn’t have to develop one of their own.

Junar looks like it’s ready to fill the gap in open data publishing with its soup to nuts approach. With lots of great features and an easy to use interface, it seems like a welcome change to the alternatives.

Sure, Tableau it’s a great product that produces really cool visualizations. But Junar’s objectives goes way beyond that:
First of all, there’s a free (as in zero cost) Junar Community platform (http://community.junar.com) that allows it’s users to collect as many datasets as they want from the web (which will autoupdate whenever the source changes, since the selected data view it’s refreshed on demand from the source) or from selfpublished files(which can be easily updated by it’s owner, again reflecting changes immediately), to organize them in Dashboards, to create and add visualizations, to easily share/download/embed/follow this data, and even invoke it from a (also) free API, something that Tableau doesn’t has (you can’t actually even download the files without registering, with Junar it’s a two-click action). This has been running for some time already, and there’s over 60k data views created by the community that are available through the Junar Community Catalog

There another Junar, which is the paid version of it, that’s really focused on institutions (Govs, NGO’s, any kind of institution really) that has a need to open it’s data to the global community and don’t have the time or resources to develop an internal solution. Sure, you could implement CKAN for free, but it doesn’t go that much beyond posting links on a webpage either, and you’ll also have to eventually use some money on learning how to actually use and implement it. The Junar Open Data platform however consists on a complete workspace that provides an end-to-end solution to it’s users, allowing them in a matter of minutes to go from a single dormant spreadsheet on their computers to a fully customizable microsite, including hosting, it’s own API, and the ability to manage every aspect of the publication (even allowing the existance of private, non published data views and collections awaiting it’s chance to shine) plus all the other aspects present in the free Community version. The datasets here have no size restrictions, so you can have a 60k rows file (which, let’s face it, it’s a LOT) and still will be considered as one dataset. (and 60k x 10 it’s also a lot of data) In the free version, there’s a 5k row restriction (that’s still a lot though) for each file. For each dataset, in both the free and paid versions, users can create as many views, dashboards and visualizations as they like…

I’ve already written too much, so i’ll let you with an open invitation to try out the platform, both the free and the paid version (there’s a 30 day free trial for it), but remember that the Workspace it’s thinked as a solution to be used by and organization that a team of collectors, publishers and enhancer users, so it might be a little tricky for a single user to manage it at first glance. Any questions shall arise, my email is available for you to poke me whenever you want : )

Take a look at Knoema at http://knoema.com. Here we provide end-to-end experience for users working with data. We have a collection of 600+ public datasets on many topics and you can upload your own datasets as well. We provide data analysis and visualization tools. You can check what can be done at our Dashboard Gallery on home page. For developers we provide full API access. For companies and organizations we provide tools to build their own customized data portals like http://opendataforafrica.org.